Rebecca Roanhorse

Rebecca Roanhorse was born in Conway, Arkansas, in 1971 and grew up in North Texas, adopted by white parents. She studied at Yale, earned a master's in theology at Union Theological Seminary and a law degree from the University of New Mexico, focusing on federal Indian law. Before fiction she spent a short stint as a programmer on Wall Street, clerked at the Navajo Supreme Court and practiced law. She lives in New Mexico with her husband, Navajo jeweler Michael Roanhorse, and their daughter.

Her breakout was a short story. "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" (2017) follows a man who guides tourists through Indigenous experiences in virtual reality. It won both the Hugo and the Nebula for short story, and that same year she received the new-writer award now called the Astounding Award. Few careers start like that.

Her first novel was Trail of Lightning (2018), urban fantasy set on the Navajo reservation after a climate catastrophe, with monsters and gods from Diné tradition loose in the world. It won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and continued in Storm of Locusts (2019). The series also drew criticism: in 2018, leaders of Ohkay Owingeh, the community she says she descends from on her mother's side, stated that she is not a member, and Navajo writers questioned her use of Diné traditions.

In 2020 came Black Sun, the first book of Between Earth and Sky. It is epic fantasy with cliffside cities, priestly clans, sailors and an eclipse that could shift the balance of power, all inspired by the Americas before European contact. The setting steps away from the medieval European template the genre leans on. Fevered Star (2022) and Mirrored Heavens (2024) closed the trilogy, which won the 2025 Hugo for Best Series. AMC picked up Black Sun for television in 2021.

She works across formats. She wrote the novel Star Wars: Resistance Reborn (2019), the middle-grade adventure Race to the Sun (2020) and the novella Tread of Angels (2022). In comics she wrote the Marvel miniseries Phoenix Song: Echo. On TV she wrote an episode of A Murder at the End of the World (2023) and has a story credit on Marvel's Echo (2024).